Wayne Andrews reached out to Dish Network in April after his satellite-TV tuner and recorder broke down.

When the customer service representative had more questions than answers, the Boulder resident turned to the Better Business Bureau.

“These businesses are too big to function, and they don’t care about customer service,” Andrews said.

He lodged a complaint, one of more than 50,000 filed against DirecTV and Dish Network over the past three years — a staggering number even for companies with more than 30 million satellite-TV subscribers combined, according to the Denver/Boulder BBB.

Last month, the consumer protection agency — which generally targets potential scams from little-known businesses — took the unusual move of calling out corporate giants. With many of the satellite-TV complaints focused on steep termination fees, the BBB warned customers to read the fine print before signing service contracts with DirecTV and Dish.

The public-relations black eye surfaces at a critical juncture for Douglas County-based Dish, which employs 21,000 nationwide and about 5,000 in Colorado.

The nation’s No. 2 satellite-TV provider recently suffered a quarterly subscriber loss for the first time in more than a year. In fact, the multichannel industry — which includes TV services offered by cable and phone companies — lost customers in the second quarter for the first time ever, according to research firm SNL Kagan.

With about 100 million subscribers nationwide, the industry may be saturated, said Ian Olgeirson, a Denver-based senior analyst for SNL Kagan.

“We don’t see significant growth opportunities,” he said.

Taking a new approach

Long recognized for targeting price-conscious consumers, Dish has launched a rebranding to help grow its subscriber base, spotlighting the company’s notoriously private chief executive Charlie Ergen in a series of television ads. The commercials end with Ergen telling viewers, “Let’s watch TV.”

One of Dish’s goals for the campaign is to send the message that “we want you to get to know us personally,” said chief marketing officer Ira Bahr.

“There is no way that any company can win with a positioning based only on price,” Bahr said. “We need to assure that customers and prospects understand the really impressive range of attributes that we offer.”

Dish plans to roll out Google TV this fall, a service that will allow subscribers to simultaneously search for content on their DVRs, the Dish network and the Internet, among other features. The company also recently launched an online video portal, DishOnline.com, that offers streaming of live programming and recorded content.

“It’s very wise for them to start building up on some brand awareness rather than solely focusing on bashing DirecTV and price,” said Bob Scherman, editor of Satellite Business News, a trade publication. “Historically, Dish always tries to portray itself as the lower cost provider, whereas DirecTV doesn’t focus on price.”

Unlike cable-TV operators, satellite providers generally fly under the radar with rate increases. Comcast and other cable companies often notify various municipalities of price hikes because their cable lines use public rights of way. That often generates a lot of complaints about cable-TV pricing, even though DirecTV acknowledges that its fees increase by about 3 to 4 percent a year, on par with cable services.

The tables were turned with the BBB release about satellite-TV complaints in August. The volume and “pattern of issues” found in the complaints filed with the BBB pushed the organization to issue a public statement about satellite-TV service, said spokeswoman Megan Miller.

El Segundo, Calif.-based Direc-TV received 39,000 complaints and Dish received 13,000, which covered problems with service, billing, cancellation fees and other issues.

Some customers reported facing early-termination fees of more than $600, according to the BBB.

Not batting a thousand

In recent years, satellite-TV providers have turned to 24-month service contracts in an effort to cut down on the number of subscribers who defect after a promotional pricing period ends, said Bruce Leichtman, president of Leichtman Research Group, a market research firm.

“Cable generally does not do that,” he said.

DirecTV spokesman Robert Mercer said the company is “working hard to fix each and every issue.”

“We’ve always prided ourselves on providing excellent customer service, but we recognize we’re not batting a thousand in this area,” Mercer said.

He adds that the complaints represent less than 1 percent of DirecTV’s 18.8 million subscribers.

Dish, which has 14 million subscribers, acknowledged in a prepared response to the BBB concerns that “there is always room for improvement.”

“We appreciate the need to address customer concerns in an effective and timely manner,” the company said. “We will continue to work with the BBB to respond to and resolve these issues as quickly as possible.”

Using data from the Dartmouth Atlas – a source of information and analytics that organizes Medicare data by a variety of indicators linked to medical resource use – we recently ranked geographic areas based on markers of end-of-life care quality, including deaths in the hospital and number of physicians seen in the last year of life.